If you are not familiar with Park Chan-wook, you should be. If he is not the best South Korean director, he is second only to Bong Joon-ho. His most well known film is probably Oldboy, which (not for the first time) spawned the shitty American remake of the same name a couple of years ago.
The Handmaiden is no Oldboy, but it is still a good film and I would recommend it. Trying to summarise the plot without giving the entire film away would be a difficult task, so I will keep it brief. The storyline revolves around a Japanese nobleman arriving on a doorstep with the intention of marrying a woman. A handmaiden has recently joined the services of the woman in question, and appears to be working together with the Japanese nobleman, but to what end?
In some ways the film is similar to The Age of Shadows, another Korean film that I briefly mentioned in my last post on this sub. They have completely different settings and storylines, but both share a similarity in the way the characters relate to each other and the double and triple crossing that occurs throughout both films.
One thing I like about South Korean films in general is that they all have their own unique feel to them. This is something that is hard to find in most American films, and is also lacking in a lot of UK films too. Snowpiercer, an American film directed by Park Chan-wook in 2013, still managed to retain some of the bizarre and offbeat/unnerving atmosphere that I could only describe as "Koreanism". Whilst The Handmaiden doesn't fully fit into that category, some of it is still present. It also shares another characteristic of Korean films: It has a very simple premise, but is a very complex film.
The setting, directing and soundtrack are all great. It can be hard to say whether the acting in a film is good when you can not understand the language being spoken (in this case it was Korean and Japanese), but overall I'd say it was decent. It was a good film, but had potential to be a great one with a better cast. I'm also at a disadvantage typing up a review for this because I had to pause it halfway through last night and carry on watching today.
If I took anything away from this film, it is the nonexistent commentary on the way women were treated in Korea/Japan. When I say nonexistent, I mean it is something that was not purposefully put into the film, it just happened. Films from the US or UK that deal with historical societal issues are hard for me to watch. The subject of slavery as portrayed in 12 Years A Slave, for example, did not really make an impact on me. If I was reviewing that film, I would call it a commentary on slavery, and then describe the plot. Korean films (and Japanese ones) differ wildly from that, because they focus on an actual storyline first, and the other stuff is secondary. In Korea and Japan, there are films that are very subtle in the way that they go about providing a commentary on past or current affairs; Studio Ghibli making animated films for children, but providing opinions and protests against war and nuclear weapons/power is probably the best example of this.
I know I barely talked about the film in this review, but it is difficult to talk about. There is nothing notable about it other than the huge twists and turns in the plot, which I can't discuss without giving it away.
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
PMYA: 82%
No comments, yet...